


In Memoriam

by Reynier



Category: Arthurian Mythology
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, Multi, POV Outsider, References to Character Death, Reincarnation, Wakes & Funerals, references to stuff like depression and bigotry but no extensive portrayals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:34:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28782063
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Reynier/pseuds/Reynier
Summary: The knights of the Round Table have been reborn! Unfortunately, due to all the murders that happened the first time, very few of them are on good terms.It makes Calogrenant's funeral a bit awkward.
Relationships: Gawain/Lancelot du Lac (Arthurian), Minor or Background Relationship(s)
Comments: 30
Kudos: 15





	1. An Ominous Email

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! this is gonna be shorter than [my previous multichap,](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25430983/chapters/61676671) but tonally weirdly similar???? i gravitate to the same themes lol. its also like... weirdly paced idk dont expect the same kind of cliffhanger at the end of each chapter like in dead in the abbey. slkfjlskdfj can you tell im scared of disappointing ppl.  
> anyway ive put a huge amount of thought into this fic and i really hope ppl enjoy it <3

When he got the email, Galahad was sitting in the corner of a rather posh cafe in Paris, sipping his very indulgent cup of coffee— black, sugarless, no milk, but it had cost him a whole four euros— and celebrating his graduation from Terminale. It was not an easy accomplishment, and indeed he had scraped through his bacs with 10s across the board, save for a brilliant 17 in philosophy that had aggravated his professor to no end. Today’s celebration was, he admitted to himself, only 60% about the fact that he had survived secondary education in adverse circumstances. The remaining 40% was about the look on Prof. Hily’s face when he’d read out Galahad’s mark. 

He was in a very good mood, or at least as close to Galahad got to a good mood. The day was crisp and clear. No one else in the cafe had noticed the scuff marks on his shoes, or that his laptop was at least six years old and cheap as could be, or that there was a faint stain on his black turtleneck from the time he’d had tea spilled on him two years ago. And— this was the most important part— he was the proud holder of various exams which amounted to a successful baccalaureate in Social Studies and Economics. The fact that his success had been marginal was of no concern; any employer who looked at his record would agree that the fact he had made it to lycée at all was a miracle. Galahad took satisfaction in the idea that they thought that was an idiom. 

And then the email. He knew it would be bad from the second he saw it was from Arthur— Arthur who hadn’t contacted him since a lengthy and seemingly genuine apology a scant two weeks after Galahad had remembered everything. The subject line read simply: _Funeral_. Galahad’s heart sank further. 

_Dear all_ (the email read)—

_I’m very sad to contact you all out of the blue, and I wish we could gather in happier circumstances, but I must inform you that Emett MacPherson, once known as Sir Calogrenant, is dead. He passed away on Tuesday afternoon in a motorboat accident off the coast of Skye._

_Calogrenant was a great man with many dear friends, and he will be greatly missed. His wry humour and care for..._

Galahad scoffed and scrolled down to the bottom of the email. Over a thousand years ago Calogrenant had told him that he should “loosen up and have a little fun with the ladies,” a sentiment which didn’t have a name then but certainly did now; and besides, Galahad had been fifteen. Now he was eighteen and had never had fun with anyone, himself included. Deep down he worried that he was too broken to have anything in him God wanted, and that had a name as well, he knew, a name with ‘internalized’ in front of it. Of course, this didn’t mean that Calogrenant had deserved to die. Galahad was very firm on the point that _no one_ deserved to die.

... _the funeral will be held on March 5th at the Mallaig and Morar Community Center. I would greatly appreciate it if you all would come, as in the end we should hold on to old friends. Please be at the Center by 9am. The funeral will run from 10 to 12, at which point we will have a free buffet (kindly funded by Guinevere) to celebrate Calogrenant’s presence in our lives._

He closed the tab. Sat back against his thin chair and stared straight ahead of him until the man who occupied the space he was staring at noticed and said something very impolite. Took a sip of his coffee, rallied his suddenly fraying nerves, and opened another tab to his email. 

One new email had arrived in the time he had been staring at the rude homophobe across the room, and it was from exactly who he had expected to be contacted by— Gawain. Or Giovanni, or whatever the hell his name was now. 

_Hey, I wanted to shoot you a message as soon as I heard about Calogrenant, but L said I should wait until the funeral info went out. I know things are rough right now, and I also know you don’t like taking handouts, but I wanted to offer to cover your train tickets and a hotel room if you’re going. Consider it a family expense or something, ya? I think you’re my son if you really stretch the law a lot._

_Hope the exams went well._

_Gawain xoxo_

Then, below that, there was his little automated sign-off:

_Giovanni Cunningham, PhD._

_Université de Rennes_

_Faculté de Philosophie_

That got Galahad to smile, just a little bit. Not because he wanted anyone else’s money— least of all Gawain’s— but it wasn’t an offer Gawain made lightly. He had been born solidly working class this time and according to everyone’s stories he chafed at it in the beginning, rubbed up against the limits of his funds at every turn with an irritation that would have been highly vindicating to his associates if it wasn’t that he was so pathetic about it. All of that had faded by the time Galahad met him. His doctorate had put him so deep in debt even he had been forced to learn budgeting. 

Outside, a gaggle of kids rocketed past on scooters, blasting pop music. Galahad watched them go. It might be good to see people, he thought, or at least to see the handful of people who had kept in touch with him over the five years since he had remembered everything— Gawain and Bors, as might be expected, but also Guinier, Lanval, Torec and Miraude, Lucan. People whose names he had barely known the first time around but had watched him and seen something that needed a steadying hand. It was patronizing, and part of him loathed it. The rest of him knew they were the best of a ragged crew and that pride was a deadly sin. 

He wrote a response email to Giovanni Cunningham, PhD; it should have taken thirty seconds and instead it took him an hour. It would be nearly two hundred euros, with both trips and the hotel factored in. He had thought today’s coffee an incredible luxury. Two hundred euros, to see people who were the worst sinners he knew. 

He pressed send. 

Yvain and Masha had driven all the way from Bournemouth for the funeral. The traffic at the end of the week was always dreadful, especially going through Liverpool, and even without the holdups it was a good ten hour drive. Yvain had pointed this out with as little overt terror as he could; Masha, who was from Siberia, had said he was a coward and needed a glimpse of what suffering truly was. That had earned her a laughing kiss and a more contemplative embrace afterward, because there was something in this gathering that worried Yvain greatly. 

But he acquiesced. And now they were sitting in their little hotel room in Mallaig, stiff and exhausted after a full day of driving, and Yvain did not know how to say what he knew needed to be said. 

“TV?” asked Masha, who could tell something was wrong. 

No, not the TV. 

“There’s an electric kettle,” she said, “and— looks like decaf Earl Grey.”

That would be nice. 

“It’ll be great to see the town in the dayli—”

“Masha, I need to warn you about my family,” Yvain managed, forcing the words out in an interruption and then blushing, lifting his hands to apologize. He knew he was behaving oddly and couldn’t help it.

Fortunately Masha just gave him a concerned glance and pressed the switch on the kettle before flopping down next to him on the bed. “You _have_ warned me about your family,” she said. “Look, it will be fine. I know how bad family is. You know I left Novosibirsk so I could transition. I understand.”

Yvain wanted to laugh. It wasn’t funny, of course, but bigoted relatives would have been infinitely preferable to the reality, which was so unbelievable that the explanation had chased away his first girlfriend in uni. _I’m a reincarnated 6th century knight from a blood-stained family tree and everyone at this funeral killed one another_ was a hard pill to get people to swallow. He thought for an instant about what Masha would say if he told her his cousin alone had done things that would get him put before the Hague if he did them nowadays. Probably she would check him for a fever. “I just— I worry what you’ll think of me.”

She gave a little sigh like she was disappointed in him, just a bit, and she rolled over onto her stomach. “What I think of you…” Reaching up, she brushed an imaginary speck of dust off his cheek. “I think you’re funny, and kind, and handsome, and I love you very much. Your family isn’t going to change that, yes?”

“Right,” sighed Yvain, because it was easier than trying to explain further. He let himself be pulled down into a long kiss which Masha eventually broke to check her watch and point out, slyly, that it was only nine and they didn’t have to be up until eight or so. The prospect of a pleasant distraction cheered him up considerably. _Don’t think about the family thing_ , he reasoned, _that’s the best tack, just don’t worry about it._ So, smiling, he scooted up to the head of the bed and made space for Masha on his lap, straddling his hips, sliding her hands under his shirt, kissing him and whispering into his ear. 

And he tried not to think about the worst fear he had, which was that it wasn’t what his family might reveal about themselves that would be the problem— it would be what they might reveal about him. 

The flowers for the funeral cost a hundred pounds. The buffet was nearly a thousand, because they’d had to have it shipped from Inverness, and the little cards and decorations were another hundred, plus nearly three thousand she’d shelled out— via the appropriate subsidiaries— to ferry various attendees over from wherever they were skulking. Laura Nichols, née Laura Nicolosi and née Guinevere Queen of the Britons a thousand five hundred years before that, stood in the lobby of the Mallaig and Morar Community Center with her hands on her hips and a smile on her face. Today was going to go exactly as planned. If it didn’t, then she had spent over four thousand pounds on nothing. 

Well, she would have spent four thousand pounds on Calogrenant’s funeral. But that wasn’t worth anything. 

Arthur had been hovering around like a concerned bumble bee all morning, and she wanted to punch him, but that would do no good. Now he drifted over from the pathetic instant coffee machine and offered her a styrofoam cup. “Uh, this is— milk and sugar. I didn’t know how you liked it.”

With milk and sugar, as it happened. She took a polite sip. “Thank you, Arthur.”

“Ah. I’m glad it’s okay.” He glanced around the lobby in case anyone else was there. “So, I was wondering if we could talk.”

_We are talking, Arthur,_ thought Guinevere, and didn’t say it, because he really didn’t deserve it anymore. But old habits died hard. “I’d love to.”

“Thank you. So, I’m starting to wonder if this whole gathering thing was a—”

“Dinadan!” said Guinevere brightly, as the front door clattered open to admit an exhausted-looking man in a brown jacket. He had one of those haircuts that looked like a tragic World War 1 captain, and he sort of pulled it off if you squinted and were kind. “Welcome, it’s lovely to see you again.”

“Laura fucking— whoever!” said Dinadan brightly. “Niccolini? Niccolo?”

Right, this. She forgot most people did not follow her career. “Nichols, professionally.”

He gave her an easy grin, entirely ignoring Arthur beside her. “You traitor! Government’s treating you that bad, huh?”

“Well. I’ve got to make whatever compromise I can.” ‘Laura’ was the bigger problem. In the hierarchy of things that kept you back in the Department of Transport, transgender ranked infinitely higher than southern European. “I note you escaped to the States.”

“I escaped to Phoenix, which is sort of like the States but baked in the oven for a couple hours. I own an ostrich now, you know?”

“Oh?”

“Nah, I don’t. Shitty assholes.” For the first time, he seemed to notice Arthur, and clucked his tongue. “You don’t look too happy.”

Arthur gave him a miserable look. He had always been terrified of Dinadan, Guinevere knew, which hadn’t been called for back in the day when swords determined everything, but nowadays was probably a wise instinct. “We’re at a funeral.”

“Ah.” Dinadan softened, shot Guinevere a pained look. “You did all you could for him, you know that?”

_What?_

“I know,” Arthur said, his voice subdued. 

“It’s a rough world out there,” said Dinadan, and gave him a pat on the shoulder which nearly knocked him over. “Keep your head up, king.”

“I’m not a—”

“Figure of speech. Here.” He rummaged in the pocket of his notably not black pants for a second before producing a crumpled envelope. “Tristan wanted me to give you this. He and Iseult are tied up in— it’s complicated. But he thought you might appreciate some good old fashioned mail. What I think that means is he printed out images of birds and put them in an envelope, but who knows, maybe there are some inspiring words in there alongside the tits.”

Arthur blanched. “The— the what?”

“The bird,” said Guinevere, sighing. “Dinadan, get out of here, you’re being a bother.”

“I aim to delight,” he said, but he acquiesced and made for the door to their left. For a second he turned back and caught Guinevere’s eyes. “Look after him, yeah?”

“Yeah,” said Guinevere sourly. 

More people arrived as the clock approached nine, tumbling through the doors in small groups or all alone, familiar faces, faces she knew very well, and faces she barely recalled. They all knew her. She waited patiently, playing the gracious queen, and beside her Arthur— well, he hung around and tried to be supportive, she supposed. He was a good man. Deep down, under the layers of hatred and anger and memories, she wanted him to be happy. Of all people, he deserved to be happy. 

Arthur had, a little under forty years ago, sprung back into existence— well, he had been born, like any other baby, but there was surely something magical about it— in southern Wales, somewhere in between Swansea and Cardiff. On his 18th birthday a certain event had occurred on a hike involving boulders, swords, and sudden recollections of past lives. The day before he had gotten a job at Tesco, and that had made him a lot happier than the fact he was sort of the king of Britain. 

Raised on Chumbawamba and Billy Bragg, it had taken him about five minutes to find a handy pond and drop the sword in. Britain was in dire trouble, surely (Arthur was certain it was Margaret Thatcher whose existence had summoned him back from the dead), but monarchy was, in his opinion, not the best solution. So he had shown up at Tesco the next day and never said anything to anyone about being King Arthur. 

But, over the years, he had bumped into hundreds of his old courtiers. He didn’t do it on purpose, he insisted. It just happened. It had happened to Guinevere first, when she was fifteen years old and lost in a national park, confused and disoriented and very glad to meet a hiker who could point her back in the direction of the main trail. Arthur hadn’t even recognized her. Things came back, though, in fits and starts, and by the end of the week she remembered enough to understand why she hated her parents for criticizing how long she grew her hair. 

Then, at precisely 9:27 am, the doors swung open to admit a solitary figure in a crisp black suit— not designer, Guinevere noted, but clearly chosen with care— with an old-fashioned messenger bag over his shoulder. His face did something odd as soon as he saw her, like he was caught between joy and anxiousness. “Ah— Guinevere, Arthur. Nice to see you.”

The funny thing about Giovanni Cunningham was that he had somehow managed to be born even more northward than Gawain had, in some miniscule dot on the Shetlands map with a name Guinevere could never remember. His accent vacillated wildly depending on who he was talking to. She gave him as brilliant a smile as she could. “Hello, Gawain! Lovely to see you here on time.”

He shook that off with a laugh and crossed the lobby to stand by her and Arthur. “I’m fashionably late. Arthur, you’re looking less tired than the last time I saw you, which is an improvement. Guinevere, you look— good.”

“Thank you.”

“So, uh— the funeral starts at ten?” He shifted and shoved his hands in his pockets as they nodded. “L sent me in to talk to you guys— I don’t know if we’re going to make it, he’s been mid panic attack for, like, the last half an hour. He’s in the car.”

“Oh, Lord,” said Guinevere, and immediately regretted it because it made her sound like an asshole. She meant it in a sympathetic way. “Should I—”

Gawain gave her an exasperated look. “No, you really should not. He’ll get over it or he won’t. We have until noon for the buffet, right?”

“The funeral is at ten!” Arthur piped up. 

“But, like— the food isn’t until noon.”

“If you consider the food more important than the life of Calogrenant,” said Guinevere earnestly, and ignored Arthur’s sad little expression beside her. “But I thought you were different now.”

He didn’t react to that, just gave her a wide smile with nothing in the eyes. “Calogrenant’s dead. I’m here for everyone else.”

Arthur, bless his heart, took this as his queue to put himself between them. “That’s very nice of you, Gawain. Tell L he can stay in the car as long as he needs.”

“Of course,” said Gawain, gave them both another smile, and then left back out the door.

_Five,_ thought Guinevere, _four, three, two… one—_

Arthur coughed. “You should—”

“No,” she said crisply, and was saved from having to justify herself by the arrival of a gaggle of latecomers. 


	2. Remarkable Occurrences

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hrhrgnnnnghrharhhghrnranrnaaaarg its been a week. enjoy

“Seventeen minutes,” groaned L, from his position on the floor behind the front seats of the rental. The door closed, blessedly, and Gawain rubbed his hands together and shivered overdramatically. “I don’t want to. Oh, God.”

“It’s fine if you can’t.” Gawain leaned over to peer at him from the driver’s seat and brushed a strand of hair out of his face with one gloved hand. “I talked to Guinevere. And Arthur, kind of. Why does it matter if you miss the service?”

L squeezed his eyes shut and tried to will away the growing pain in his temple. “I killed him the first time. I feel like I should— I don’t know. It won’t look bad?”

“Everyone’s terrified of you anyway,” Gawain said reasonably, and this got L to let out a weak chuckle. “I don’t think failing to show up for the funeral is the thing that’s going to ruin your reputation.”

He was right, but there were other concerns. “What about yours?”

“Oh, whatever, you know? I do what I can. It’ll all be whatever it is.”

Even in French, a language composed mostly of words that didn’t mean anything, this was an incomprehensible collection of sentences. “You’re stressing over it.”

“I’m stressing over it,” Gawain admitted, “but not because of the service. The after bit is what I’m scared for.”

This happened whenever Gawain got together with any of their old friends, as L knew. _He_ always stayed behind. The cars wouldn’t fix themselves, he always pointed out, and you could grade papers on a train but you couldn’t replace a motor. When Gawain was gone, though, he would always make the hour drive to Saint-Malo and drift out into the bay on his little sailboat, rain or shine, and sit and stare up at the sky. Occasionally passing fishermen would hail him to make sure he wasn’t in trouble, and he would wave at them and force out a rare smile and pretend he wasn’t thinking of letting the winds buffet him out into the Channel and pull him under. 

Gawain knew all of this, probably, because he knew everything about L and L knew everything about him even if neither of them had said it. And he smiled and accepted L’s excuses about his bad English or his sore throat, and when he returned from his day-trips he would always bring him something back, even if it was a stale croissant from the TGV. That was how they lived. 

“If I wasn’t here,” he said aloud, “if I wasn’t here maybe—”

“If you weren’t here then I wouldn’t care at all what they thought of me,” Gawain said gently, “and I would do whatever I wanted. Which would— let’s be honest— it would probably involve scamming various people out of large quantities of cash. And I’d take you over the cash any day.”

“Aw,” said L weakly. He squirmed in his backseat trench so that his head was more easily in range of Gawain’s hand, which had been doing nice comforting things with his hair. “But, I mean, I know you care what they think of you.”

...which was why Gawain was worried. All those people after the service, many of whom he’d killed mercilessly or sacrificed to some petty political squabble, and all of whom knew what had happened in the end. It was a bitter irony that the only person whose opinion he _didn’t_ worry about was the one who had killed him. But he just gave L a shrug and ran his thumb gently over his forehead. “Yeah, but if we’re being honest with ourselves, I know exactly what they think of me. It’s like, half fear and half disdain. Plus, I’m with you, they aren’t going to be swarming me anyway.” He gave short bark of laughter. “They _literally_ turn the other way when you show up, I’ve seen it.”

“I’m a car mechanic,” said L miserably, but also with a hint of pride, because it wasn’t a good reputation but at least it was one that was well-earned. 

“It would be pretty funny if you just hauled off and killed someone at this shitty funeral.”

“Would it?”

“I think it would be.”

They pondered this for a moment together. “No,” said L at length, although he himself could hear he sounded slightly regretful, “I don’t think it would be. I would get, you know, arrested.”

A glance at the clock on the dashboard display. 9:54. Then Gawain sighed and shrugged off his suit jacket before maneuvring himself into the back seat, guiding L’s head so it rested on his knee. “I’m making a command decision. We’re staying here until the buffet, okay?”

“Oh, thank God,” groaned L. He felt his whole body deflate, tension he hadn’t even known he was carrying fading out into the echoes of anxiety. It didn’t solve the whole problem, but the idea of sitting through a two-hour funeral service for a man he had once killed sounded excruciating. 

He wondered, vaguely, if it would actually make him feel guilty. It was very rare that he felt guilty over anyone he had killed. Several of his ex-victims had confronted him, in this life, and he had felt dreadful— dreadful for the trauma they were carrying with them now, but not for killing them, not precisely. He was very much aware of the issues inherent in this disconnect, but it was the sort of thing you couldn’t tell a therapist. L Shin, _Réparateur Automobile et Mécanique,_ had never killed anyone. He had punched a few people, in extenuating circumstances involving his own safety, but that was a normal human experience. Committing vast swathes of murders in the 6th century and feeling embarrassed but not guilty about it was not. 

“Now, I don’t have reception here so we can’t watch YouTube or something,” Gawain said, “but I can tell you why Kant was a piece of shit for two hours.”

L grinned. “Sounds good.”

The man sitting next to Masha looked like a supermodel. He was tall, broad-shouldered, with loose black hair and a smile that was too easy for a funeral. On his other side sat a short woman with a mess of curly brown hair, graying slightly and pulled up into a loose bun. They had the easy physicality of a couple, and Masha wanted to talk to them, wanted to say anything that would get her out of the muggy silence into which Yvain had fallen. He kept glancing at the door, clearly waiting for someone to arrive who had not yet done so. At first his mood had been broken by the entrance of two women who had come over to give him hugs and introduce themselves to Masha as Laudine and Isabel— but then the glances had started up again, more nervously this time. 

Then the service had trundled to start, slow and dreadfully boring. A welcome was given by a kindly-looking man in his middle age who opened his mouth and made even Masha cry, Masha who hadn’t known Emett MacPherson in the slightest. Then he stepped down from the podium and the spell was broken, and he was just a tired, nervous man with his speech notes held too tightly in his hand. A parade of talkers came after him, and whispers filled the pauses in between. The couple next to her chattered away in rapid-fire Italian. Yvain glumped. In the pew in front of them, Laudine and Isabel whispered to each other and glanced behind too often for Masha not to wonder if they were talking about her. 

Finally, an hour into the service, the man next to her took pity on her and turned, holding out his hand. “I’m Priamus,” he said, giving her a wide smile. “You’re not from around here, are you?”

It would have been a more uncomfortable question if his own English hadn’t been accented as well. As it was she figured he meant the family, which certainly seemed very insular. “Ah… no, I’m Yvain’s girlfriend. I’m Maria— you can call me Masha?”

“Hi, Priamus,” Yvain said from beside her. He didn’t sound very enthused, but that was probably the glump. 

“Yvain! That’s it, Yvain. And Masha, lovely to meet you. This is Lucia.”

Lucia said something in Italian that sounded like a greeting, and Masha made appropriate noises back.

“Priamus, what have you been up to?” Yvain said, with a voice that indicated he was dredging himself into the world of the living, but not without complaint. 

He stretched back, knitting his hands behind his head. “I run a bar in Beirut. Hole in the wall. Hey, you— oh, we’re supposed to be quiet again. Bye.”

Another hour of droning eulogies. Then, finally, blessedly, a pastor wandered up to the stage and made the appropriate noises. Everyone stood. Masha held her breath and mourned a man she hadn’t known and her boyfriend hadn’t cared for at all. They said a few words of solemnitude, they bowed their heads, and finally the moment ended. 

Low murmurs broke out throughout the hall as people relaxed and exchanged comforting words with their neighbours. Masha was just about to ask Yvain to introduce her to his friends when the double doors swung open, admitting two men. It was a dramatic entrance, but not so much that it warranted the silence which fell back over the hall. 

“Oh, shit,” said the taller man, very quietly. “Sorry. So sorry, everyone.”

They were an odd pair: the taller with neat chin-length black hair and a rough outfit that only qualified as formal by virtue of being black; the shorter in a clean cut suit, his brown curls far on the wrong side of untidy. Neither looked happy to be there. Beside Masha, Yvain let out a small sigh. 

“You two are late,” someone on the other side of the room said mildly. “Had a nice sleep-in?”

The room stilled further. A couple surreptitious chuckles spread like ripples in a lake. Yvain was not one of the ones to laugh, and so Masha didn’t either. 

“Ah— the buffet is in…” The nervous man with the surprisingly compelling oration waved his hands from his seat at the head of the hall. “Everyone, the buffet is in the smaller festivities room. Through the door to the right. Ah— nice to see everyone here.”

The man with the curly hair rallied, gave the room a wave, and shot finger guns in the vague direction of the first voice. “Had some unforeseen complications,” he said, “but we’re here now, Dinadan, and it’s lovely to see you. Ah— I suppose we should all head over to the other room.”

The gathered throng acquiesced, some of the silence trickling into uncomfortable small-talk. Uncertain whether Priamus and Lucia were in on whatever side of family drama Yvain was, Masha waited until they had drifted off before turning to him and whispering, “What’s happening? I feel like something is happening.”

He had a on his face and his eyes were narrowed in that way that happened when he was getting a headache. “My asshole cousin,” he said. “Not as much of an asshole as he used to be. His boyfriend’s the problem, really.”

It didn’t take much to guess which was the cousin. The family resemblance rang strong, namely in height. Masha had heard snippets of gossip over the three years she’d known Yvain— there had been a few stress-inducing text messages from the cousin in question, she knew, particularly to do with invitations to visit that Yvain always declined. He didn’t seem to dislike his cousin, but dealing with him always caused stress. “Ah—” She glanced around to make sure no one was nearby. They were some of the last stragglers in the hall, and everyone else was engaged in conversation. “A problem how? The family doesn’t like him?”

Yvain’s mouth twisted. “ _The family_ is in fact a loose conglomerate of vicious backstabbing sub-families. Think— think medieval blood feud, but modern.”

“Ah.”

“Giovanni and L— my cousin is Giovanni, he’s alright, kind of.” Yvain paused and ran a hand through his hair, his eyes flitting about anxiously. “L got into a big fight with everyone a while ago. He dropped off the radar. Actually, I haven’t seen him in— Jesus. A _really_ long time.”

This was what Yvain had meant when he said this gathering was going to be difficult, then. A fractured family, estranged relatives and significant others everyone hated. Well, she could deal with that. “I will follow you around and talk to whoever you talk to, alright?” She gave him a bracing smile. “We will be fine. Hey, it’s a funeral, what’s the worst that can happen? It’s not like anyone _else_ is going to die.”

“Yeah,” said Yvain. “Haha. Imagine.”

L could have French-kissed Priamus in front of the whole gathering. He wouldn’t, because neither he nor Priamus liked the other very much, and also everyone would look at him judgmentally, but the instinct was there. He and his companion, a short woman with curly hair, had ambled over from the coffee display once the patterns of traffic in the room had left L and Gawain alone in a circle of emptiness. “Nice to see you guys,” Priamus said. He took a long sip out of the mini-straw he was supposed to use to stir his cup. “Gawain, looking dishevelled. Lancel— L, looking tired. It’s sure been a while for you and me.”

Gawain had an expression on his face that indicated he was feeling much the same way towards Priamus that L currently was. “We’re exhausted. Busy night. Our train didn’t get in until late. And— you must be Lucia!”

A few rapid sentences were exchanged in Italian. L zoned out briefly. Then he heard the word _strippers_ and tuned back in out of curiosity. Gawain had an impressed look on his face. “Wow,” he said. “That’s how I want to go out. L, how about it, you think you can hire some strippers for my funeral?”

“No,” said L decisively. “I’ll dump your body in the ocean after desecrating it. That way people will think you were brutally murdered.”

“I _was_ brutally murdered.”

L cast a nervous glance at Priamus, who didn’t look anything but amused. That was the good thing about him, of course. Even L, who was his polar opposite in just about everything except for taste, could appreciate his unflappability. Out loud, he said, “You’re going to get brutally murdered again if you don’t introduce me to Lucia.”

“This is my life partner,” said Priamus pleasantly, gesturing to her. He said something to her in Italian which, judging from Gawain’s lack of reaction, probably wasn’t insulting. “We met at university, been living together ever since. She’s my best friend. Also, I feel like I need to clarify, Lucia, Lucius, no relation.”

The concept of a modern Lucius was terrifying, although feasibly extant somewhere. “I— I wouldn’t assume so,” said L. “You didn’t like Lucius much, from what I remember.”

“No one liked Lucius much.” Priamus cast a surreptitious look around, and L got the impression he was hoping someone else would join him in diplomatic defusement. “Too bad I fucked him. Waste of at least ten hours.”

Gawain shot him a horrified look. “What? All at once?”

“No, no, I’m adding it up.”

“Is Priamus the— the right name nowadays?” L said, wishing desperately he had a less active imagination. 

“Eh, I don’t mind. Priamus is fine. My name is Karim Shakir. You can pi— oh, hello, uh— sorry, remind me of your name—”

“It was Isolde of Brittanny, but now it’s Jacqueline.” She had approached with another woman on her arm whom Lancelot almost didn’t recognize through her heavy makeup and dyed bangs. Then it clicked, just as Jacqueline continued, “And Elaine. We haven’t seen any of you for— a long time.”

Elaine gave them a lopsided smile. “A thousand five hundred years. I’ve been wanting to catch up, but— I wasn’t sure you guys would want Arthur to put me in contact with you. Not after, uh, everything. Things got even worse after I— after me, from what Jackie says.”

“Worse,” echoed L, casting a nervous glance at Priamus and more specifically at Lucia. She didn’t speak English, ostensibly. Still, it didn’t do to discuss these matters casually. And even Priamus, nonchalant as he was, would probably find his tolerance tested by discussion of exactly what had happened after he left Camelot. “Worse about sums it up. It’s really nice to see you, Elaine. You’re doing well?”

“Really well. Finishing up uni— oh.” She glanced around as a microphone crackled. “Oh, Lord. What’s happening now?”

Arthur’s voice, staticky and unsure, coughed into the microphone. “Ah— hello, everyone. Glad you made it to the— the buffet. I’ve made a little slideshow to celebrate Calogrenant’s life, uh, so that everyone who didn’t get the chance to meet him this ti— I mean, you know, meet him recently, say hello, keep in touch, that sort of thing— so that you can all remember him and his zest for— for life. Guinevere, would you mind pressing play?”

Even L felt bad for him. Arthur had always been vaguely amiable towards him, up until the point when he hadn’t been, but in the years since he had come to the conclusion that something in him had still been Merlin’s doing, Merlin who had only ever wanted to make his puppet-kings feared. But as far as anyone could tell Merlin’s influence had finally faded, the sorcerer himself still trapped in an impenetrable cave somewhere in France. And besides, L wasn’t the sort to hold a grudge over a little thing like attempted murder. 

The slideshow began. At the first image alone, uncomfortable titters spread throughout the room. “ _Dio cane_ ,” swore Priamus sadly, and covered his eyes with his hand. “You’d expect them not to show pictures of him in the boat.”

Pictures in the boat, however, seemed to be the only type of picture anyone had ever taken of Calogrenant. The attendees laughed nervously as picture after picture of Calogrenant, sullen-faced and displaying fish of various sizes from the seat of his motorboat, paraded across the screen. Beside L, Gawain winced. “This is bad,” he said. “Oh, dear. The music doesn’t help either.”

On the stage, Guinevere stood stone-faced behind the computer, refusing to make eye contact with an increasingly confused Arthur. She wasn’t making eye contact with anyone, L included. At least that was a relief. 

Of course, L wasn’t the reason they didn’t talk to Guinevere. Gawain was. 


	3. A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *slaps chapter* this bad boy can fit so much pov outsider

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiii im back

Masha had been in the presence of Yvain’s family for four hours, and that was all it had taken her to understand why he didn’t talk to them. His exes— for such it was clear Laudine and Isabel were— were friendly but distant; his cousin, despite his clear nerves, had a look in his eye that would make Masha cross the street; and his other friends seemed nonexistent. The other assembled guests talked right, smiled right, and yet something was off. They glanced nervously at each other whenever Yvain approached with Masha on his arm. They made odd little comments that didn’t make any sense. They talked, in fact, like they had all known each other for years, despite the fact that surely Masha couldn’t be the only significant other to have never before attended a gathering. 

She asked Yvain offhand how often the family got together. He gave her an uncomfortable look and rubbed his hands together. “This is the first time in a while.”

“A while?”

“Years, I guess. Not all of us together. I— I saw Giovanni a while back.” There was no one standing near them, as they were lurking behind the water coolers, but he glanced around nervously nonetheless. “And I’ve been in touch with Isabel and Laudine. But it’s— awkward, you know. Arthur’s alright, now, but there are a lot of grudges. And Lancelot being here makes it all worse.”

Masha frowned. “Lancelot?”

“Fuck. L. I don’t know what the deal is with that, honestly.”

“Lancelot’s a funny name. Is that… French? Dutch?”

“French, but don’t say it too loud.” Yvain cast another look over his shoulder, made eye contact with someone Masha didn’t recognize, and gave them a half-hearted wave before turning back to her. “I’ll have to introduce you to Giovanni at some point today. Common decency. I want to apologize in advance for how weird he is.”

She placed a comforting hand on his shoulder, which was tense under the plain fabric of his suit jacket. “Yvain, really, it’s alright. I’m not going to judge you for your odd family. You’ve got plenty of lovely friends in Bournemouth.”

“Ah,” he said awkwardly, gesturing behind her, “and speaking of odd family, this is— uhm— one of my cousins. And Lynette.”

Masha turned, prepared for another tense interaction, but she was pleasantly surprised to find a pair of people who, for once, seemed jovial and well-intentioned. Her eyes took in the fashion, the slightly relieved look to their faces, and immediately sorted them into a category of _trans and thus trustworthy Yvain relatives._ She gave them a wave. “Hi, I’m Masha.”

“Lynette,” said the woman, and popped a bubble in her bright blue gum. She didn’t look very much like she was in mourning, but she did look vaguely annoyed at being there. “Yvain, we never talked, but as I recall you’re Gareth’s only sane relative, so here we are.”

The man, who must have been Gareth, gave them a friendly nod. “I’ve really missed you. And it’s lovely to meet you, Masha.”

“You two as well,” she said, giving them a smile. If it had a frantic edge, they politely didn’t remark on it. “It’s nice to meet the family.”

“Yeah!” said the one named Gareth, cast a glance at Yvain as though he was worried he had said something wrong, and then repeated himself. “Yeah.”

“Yeah,” Yvain echoed glumly.

Lynette popped another bubble in her gum. “They suck, huh?” 

“Uh,” said Masha. Her heart picked up a bit, old anxiety resurfacing, and she cast Yvain a strangled glance. He looked dismal but not surprised, and he also didn’t say anything. Masha gave Lynette and Gareth a polite grimace. “I haven’t really— talked with anyone much.”

“Good plan,” murmured Gareth under his breath. 

Now Yvain raised a hand and made to speak, but Lynette waggled a finger at him and said, “Masha, here’s my advice.” She paused. “You’re listening?”

“Yes?”

“Run now. Run far away. Dump poor Yvain, move to Caledonia, and throw away your phone.”

“We’re in Caledonia, babe,” said Gareth, giving her a frown. 

“What?”

“Caledonia is Scotland.”

“Oh. I meant Canada. Move to Canada and turn down Yvain’s calls.”

“Hey,” said Yvain miserably, “hey, let’s not do that. Let’s not— let’s not do that.”

Masha squeezed his hand and glared at Lynette, who seemed unimpressed. “I’m not doing that. And that’s— I don’t appreciate strangers making jokes about me dumping my boyfriend.”

“She wasn’t joking,” said Yvain.

“I wasn’t joking, yeah.”

Awkward silence descended. Then Gareth said, “Yvain, I like what you’ve done with your hair. Very, uh, photoshoot-y. It looks good.”

“Hehe,” said Lynette. “Man bun hipster. You always were the funniest Orkney.”

Sighing, Yvain said, “I’m not an Orkney. Gareth is an Orkney.”

“I disowned myself.”

“Orkney?” said Masha. She was feeling as though she had been set adrift in a boat which was now on fire. “Like the islands?”

“It’s the— the nickname for my cousins,” said Yvain hurriedly. “Gareth, Ga— Giovanni—”

“Gagiovanni,” Lynette agreed breezily.

Gareth chuckled. “Gagiovanni.”

“ _What_?” Masha said again. 

“See, this is why you should dump Yvain.”

Suddenly she felt close to tears. There were so many people in this room, and none of them were looking at her yet except for the ones in front of her, but she needed to get out, needed air, needed anyone to talk to who wasn’t her dismal boyfriend or his awful mocking relatives. “I’m going to— go outside— Yvain, I’ll be back soon. I just need some— I need fresh air.”

He made to stop her, and possibly Gareth and Lynette did as well, but the tears were coming and she could not let them come while she was inside in front of all these people she didn’t know. She pushed past throngs of mourners, flung the doors open to the main hall, then the ones to the lobby as well, and finally emerged into the clear outside air. She smelled salt, the tell-tale ocean scent, and heard waves crashing from around the corner. The ocean, that would be nice. 

It was a foggy, overcast day, but she was used to that. Behind the community center, a small harbour butted up against the asphalt, and waves crashed against tightly-packed rocks. Overhead a seagull swooped against a cloudy backdrop. Masha took a deep breath, tucked her hands in her pockets, and stared out at the ocean. 

It was some time before she heard the sound of footsteps crunching over the gravel towards her. She turned to find a man she had seen inside but not spoken to— glasses, brown leather jacket, dress shoes. “Hi,” she said. She wasn’t crying anymore, fortunately, and it was eminently possible she was simply admiring the view of the ocean. 

“Hey,” he said amiable, and came to stand a few feet away from her, gazing out across the choppy waves. “I’m Pietro, but my friends call me Dinadan for complicated and unnecessary reasons. I don’t think I’ve met you?”

“Maria— you can call me Masha.” She held out her hand, which he shook. “I’m here with Yvain Loeb?”

“Oh, nice, nice. Haven’t talked to Yvain in a while, but I always liked him.” Pietro or Dinadan or whatever she was supposed to call him shot her a grin and tucked his hands in his pockets to keep them out of the biting wind. “How’s the funeral treating you?”

“Uh, good.”

“I would definitely say this is among the top ten death parties I’ve attended. You know, it’s nice to meet someone new. I respect Yvain for, you know, getting out.”

He sounded casual, but something in the words prickled at Masha’s thoughts. _Getting out_ , Dinadan said. Like it was a cult. “Oh… uhuh?”

“Hard to meet new people. And very accepting of you.”

Masha’s heart picked up. She couldn’t tell whether he was saying that it was very accepting of her to date Yvain, or whether Yvain was very accepting of her. Neither was good, but the latter was blatant transmisogyny, and in her current mood she was one mean comment away from more tears. “What— what do you mean?”

He seemed to read her nerves from her tone, and hastily raised a hand to reassure her. “I mean, you are very accepting to go out with someone with his history.”

The tears which had been brimming behind her eyes abated themselves, but her heart rate didn’t slow. Yvain’s history? What history? He was from Kilkenny; his father a baker and his mother a landscape photographer from the States. He had grown up, gone to highschool, gone to uni, dropped out of uni, worked retail, gone back to uni, and graduated with a journalism degree. Now he worked PR for some shipping company. None of it was particularly illustrious, but neither was Masha’s patchwork history other than grad school. She gave Dinadan a cold look. “What are you talking about?”

“Well,” said Dinadan slowly, as though he was mulling over the words, “all that violence. Shit, I’m getting a text. Nice to meet you, Masha. Bye.”

He left. For a long while, Masha stood, still watching the waves, barely daring to move. There was, it occurred to her, something very big that she was missing. The way everyone talked about the past, as though Things had Occurred that one did not speak of directly but which Everyone Knew. That was how families were, of course, but families were not generally over a hundred people, and they were not usually so obsessive about newcomers. And then there was Yvain. Sweet, gentle Yvain, who had shut down like an old computer the moment they had arrived, who kept glancing anxiously over his shoulder, and who had always said his family was the worst thing that had ever happened to him. 

Finally, she went back inside. The music was still playing, but softer now, as though someone had asked that man Arthur to turn it down. A preliminary glance around the room produced no Yvain, and she stood awkwardly in the doorway for a moment before a couple drifted over to her, plastic cups in hand. She was so exhausted that she did not recognize the most dramatic of Yvain’s cousins and his problematic boyfriend until it was too late, at which point she backed herself up against the wooden wall and prayed for the best. 

“Hey, hey, you’re Masha, right?” said the cousin, giving her a friendly smile. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

Well, they weren’t threatening, per se. That could be said for them, at least. Giovanni was shorter than her, which meant if push came to shove she could probably run away faster than he could chase her. She was not entirely certain what kind of a social situation would require this, but there was something in his eyes that unsettled her. As for the other, whose odd name she couldn’t remember, he stood slightly behind, his hair hanging around his face and his shoulders tense. “Hi, yeah,” she managed, and gave him a wave. “You’re— you’re, uh, Giovanni, right? And— sorry, I don’t know your name.”

“L,” said the other man, and didn’t extrapolate any further. 

“We wanted to introduce ourselves,” Giovanni said, with the general air of a door-to-door missionary. “Seeing as you’ve really been around quite a while now, haha, and it’s just dreadful of Yvain not to let me make your acquaintance earlier.” Before Masha could say anything, L gave an uncomfortable-looking shrug and muttered something to Giovanni in what sounded like French. Masha stood awkwardly and waited for them to finish their conversation before Giovanni turned back to her and clarified, “He says I’m being weird. I don’t think I’m being weird, I think I’m being really suave. So what do you do for a living?”

“Uh, I’m doing a PhD in quantum physics.” She didn’t like saying that. Just the name _quantum physics_ felt like showing off, but it was easier than trying to explain the whole field of solid-state, a process which tended to sound infinitely more show-offish. 

“Oh, wow! I couldn’t do that. That’s, like, a lot of math, right?”

“Yeah,” said Masha, and wished desperately that either Yvain would return or a hole would open up in the ground and transport her back to Bournemouth, where people interrogated her about her degree without smiling weirdly or having menacing Frenchmen next to them. Perhaps if she took them by surprise they might answer her questions. “Why did you guys show up late?”

“Oh, uh—” Giovanni cast a glance at L, then back at Masha. 

“I hate everyone here,” said L, the first multisyllabic thing she had heard him say. His English was not as strongly accented as she would have expected, and it crossed her mind that pretending to be obtusely French instead of just slightly French was quite a good excuse for not talking to people (Masha, on the other hand, tended to embrace the school of Swearing at People in Russian). “And I was in the car having an anxiety.”

She chuckled at his earnest expression and felt herself relax very minutely. “I’m sorry, that’s— I can imagine that’s hard.”

“It’s fine. I have anxiety, and one of the side effects of having anxiety is having anxieties often. I’m very anxious about it.”

Giovanni nodded, his hair bobbing back and forth. “We take turns having the anxiety. It’s been like this ever since the divorce, you know. I only get it on the weekends.”

He seemed a bit more comfortable now that L had deigned to speak as well, and out of deference to the attempt that was clearly being made to actually familiarize themselves with her, Masha gave them both a hesitant smile. “I’m sorry about the divorce. It’s nice to see you’re still on speaking terms.”

“Well, you know what they say,” Giovanni said breezily, “if you get a car mechanic, keep them, because they’ll—”

“You’re not finishing that sentence,” murmured L. 

“I’m not?”

“Not in front of Yvain’s nice girlfriend who has never met you.”

“Oh, right.” He paused. “It’s a _good_ joke.”

“Maybe it was the first dozen or so times,” said L cheerfully. For the first time she saw a hint of a smile on his face. 

“Don’t tell me, it’ll be a brain teaser.” Masha rubbed her hands together. The chill from outside still hadn’t left them. “Where did you two head over here from?”

“The refreshments table,” said Giovanni.

“France,” said L. 

How did you politely go about fishing for information about your boyfriend’s family history? A fight, that’s what Yvain had said. Dinadan had said something about violence. “And you— Yvain said he hadn’t seen you for a while.”

“I visited Reading when he was studying there,” Giovanni said, glancing around as though Yvain would apparate from thin air to reprimand him for sharing this piece of information. “But yeah, it’s been a while. I’m very occupied with teaching and L runs his business by himself.”

“And also Yvain doesn’t like me,” L added. 

Giovanni gave him a look, half-amused. More French passed between them. Then, when a consensus seemed to have been reached, Giovanni turned back to Masha and said, “We are the much-maligned pariahs of the family, you see. You’ll be summarily castigated for speaking to us. Not by Yvain, just everyone else. Oh, speak of the Devil.”

Masha turned, hoping Yvain had materialized again, but instead found herself face to face with the woman from earlier, the one who had stood by the podium during the service. Her brown hair was pulled back in a tight bun and her black suit was crisp and professional. Trailing her eyes over the small group, she gave a very slight smile. “Giovanni. L. Nice to see you.”

“You saw me this morning,” said Giovanni.

“Yes, and you were very snippy. Who’s this?”

“I’m Masha,” she said, answering the vague hand gesture towards her. It felt like the hundredth time she’d introduced herself today. “Yvain’s girlfriend. It’s lovely to meet you.”

“Yes. I’m Laura. L, it’s nice to see you making friends.”

“Thanks.” His voice was dry. Masha couldn’t tell what was underneath it. “I heard you got promoted. That’s— I’m really happy for you.”

Would it be impolite to say she needed to go to the bathroom and flee the scene? This was more politics, clearly, more politics from Yvain’s menacingly politicized family with its factions and opinions and— _history_ , as the man outside had said. The conversation in front of her continued, a bit stilted as though they were putting on a show for her benefit, and it was only Laura and L. Giovanni was silent, staring at a point slightly to the left of Masha. At first she thought he was lost in thought, but when she turned to see if Yvain had reappeared, she saw a man sitting against the wall where his eyes were focused. He looked quite a bit like Giovanni himself, and Yvain as well— brown hair, short, disconsolate expression. And he was staring straight back at her. 

Hastily, she snapped her head back. L and Laura were still talking, meaningless trivialities delivered with a slightly more relaxed air than they had been when she had first shown up. She decided to swallow her nerves and the oddity of her conversation outside, and smiled politely, nodded in the right places, inserted her own comments on occasion. L and Giovanni, she discovered, had met on the metro five years ago and hit it off immediately, which confused Masha a bit because Yvain had made it sound as though they had all been around for forever. Laura, on the other hand, worked for the Department of Transport and hoped some day to be an MP. She delivered this information in a breezy and confident tone of voice which would have sounded arrogant coming from anyone else. But there was something magnetic about her— Masha could see it in her bearing, in the eloquence of her speech, in the amused little glances she gave. 

Finally, Yvain wandered up to them. He looked vaguely ill, but managed a surprised look when he saw her company. “Ah— Masha. I’m so sorry, I wanted to give you some space and then I had to— I felt a bit sick. Hi, uh, you guys.”

They chorused their helloes. 

“Is it raining?” said Giovanni, after an awkward pause. It was the first thing he’d said in a while. 

As a group, they all turned to look out the solitary window, which was indeed speckled with droplets. Outside, dark clouds hung low, crouching over the ocean. “Looks like it,” said Yvain. 

“Yeah,” said Laura.

“I do like the rain,” Masha said weakly.

And L was silent once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i recognize ive gotten kinda swamped in setting the stage and worldbuilding and characterization and stuff but i do promise things will happen next chapter

**Author's Note:**

> comment and i'll rename my nonexistent baby after you


End file.
